Effective allocation of customers to distribution centres: A multiple ant colony optimization approach

The global and competitive business environment has identified the importance of a quick and efficient service towards the customers in the past few decades. Distribution centre (DC) plays an important role in maintaining the uninterrupted flow of goods and materials between the manufacturer and customers. The performance of the supply chain network can be easily improved by an effective or balanced allocation of customers to DCs. Improper or unbalanced allocation of customers can lead to the under- or overutilization of facilities and can further deteriorate the customer service. Performance of the DC can be judged on the basis of its ability to provide the right goods, at the right time and at the right place. The lead time or transit time to deliver the goods to the customers is an important parameter for the measuring the efficiency and effectiveness of a particular DC in a supply chain. In this paper, a multiple ant colony optimization (MACO) approach is discussed in an effort to design a balanced and efficient supply chain network that maintains the best balance of transit time and customers service. The focus of this paper is on the effective allocation of the customers to the DCs with the two-fold objective of minimization of the transit time and degree of imbalance of the DCs. MACO technique is a modified form of the traditional ant colony system, where multiple ant colonies cooperate with each other to find the best possible customer allocation pattern for the DC. The proposed technique shows better performance because of its nature of considering both positive and negative feedback in search of optimum or near-optimum results. The developed algorithm based on the proposed approach is tested on a real practical problem and the results are discussed in this paper.     

Performance analysis and partner selection for cooperative diversity based on MQAM modulation

An adaptive decode-and-forward (DF) cooperative diversity system based on quadrature modulation is proposed, in which each user is allowed to transmit its own and the partner’s data simultaneously via the in-phase and quadrature components of M -ary quadrature amplitude modulation (MQAM) constellation. Cooperative transmission in this way can avoid the bandwidth expansion in traditional cooperative systems. The closed form expression of the average bit error rate (BER) performance is derived in terms of the...     

Studies and advances on joint source-channel encoding/decoding techniques in flow media communications

Joint source-channel coding/decoding (JSCC/JSCD) techniques in flow media communications have become a state-of-the-art and one of the challenging research subjects in the spatial communication area. They have great application prospective and deep impact in various manned space flights, satellite missions, mobile radio communications and deep-space explorations. In the last few years, there have been influential achievements in JSCC/JSCD studies. This paper aims at an introduction to the basic principles o...     

A near-optimal database allocation for reducing the average waiting time in the grid computing environment

In a grid computing environment, a great many users may access the same database simultaneously. To reduce the average waiting time for all users, a grid designer usually replicates the frequently accessed database among nodes based on the load balance heuristic. On the other hand, users may raise identical queries regarding an issue of interest, e.g., stock information, on a database and each of the queries will be directed to any node having a replica of that database. That is, the same answer will be determined by multiple nodes. Consequently, there exist two shortcomings of poor data sharing and duplicate calculations if the database is not replicated and allocated adequately. In this paper, we aim to minimize average waiting time and try to overcome the two shortcomings by performing database allocation over multiple nodes without any replication. The main idea behind the proposed method is to map the original problem to the Euclidean space Rⁿ and to solve the mapped problem in Rⁿ by a gradient-based optimization technique. The theoretical analyses ensure that the proposed method can converge linearly and achieve near-optimal results.     

Adaptive channel and power allocation of downlink multi-user MC-CDMA systems

The Multi-Carrier Code Division Multiple Access (MC-CDMA) is becoming a very attractive multiple access technique for high-rate data transmission in the future wireless communication systems. This paper is focused on the joint channel and power allocation in the downlink transmission of multi-user MC-CDMA systems and considers the throughput maximization problem as a mixed integer optimization problem. For simple analysis, the problem is divided into two less complex sub-problems: power allocation and channel allocation, which can be solved by a suboptimal Adaptive Power Allocation (APA) algorithm and an optimal Adaptive Channel Allocation (ACA) algorithm, respectively. By combining APA and ACA algorithms, an adaptive channel and power allocation scheme is proposed. The numerical results show that the proposed APA algorithm is more suitable for MC-CDMA systems than the conventional equal power allocation algorithm, and the proposed channel and power allocation scheme can significantly improve the system throughput performance.     

Design for diagnosability of multistation manufacturing systems based on sensor allocation optimization

System monitoring and diagnosing can be achieved through measuring sensing data. Meanwhile, diagnosability is the capability of a system in terms of diagnosing dimensional variation and root cause identification. In order to obtain enough sensing data, special attention should be taken to the sensor allocation optimization within the framework of ensuring system diagnosability, which can lower sensing cost and reduce time to diagnosis. This paper investigates both theoretically and experimentally the effect of sensor allocation optimization on the diagnosability of a multistation manufacturing system (MMS). The design for diagnosability (DFD) is formulated and implemented in the early design phase. Three indices, namely detectability, locatability, and isolability, are proposed to measure the system diagnosability. A two-step process of diagnosing variation sources is presented to specify the variation transmission between stations and variation diagnosis within a station. An optimal methodology of sensor allocation is then proposed. A typical machining process is demonstrated as an example of the analytical procedure and reference for sensor allocation in practice. Four sensing strategies are conducted for performance comparison. Results indicate that the optimal sensor allocation yields less sensing cost and shorter time to diagnosis without loss of diagnosability.     

Robust resource allocation in a cluster based imaging system

Recently there has been an increased demand for imaging systems in support of high-speed digital printing. The required increase in performance in support of such systems can be accomplished through an effective parallel execution of image processing applications in a distributed cluster computing environment. The output of the system must be presented to a raster based display at regular intervals, effectively establishing a hard deadline for the production of each image. Failure to complete a rasterization task before its deadline will result in an interruption of service that is unacceptable. The goal of this research was to derive a metric for measuring robustness in this environment and to design a resource allocation heuristic capable of completing each rasterization task before its assigned deadline, thus, preventing any service interruptions. We present a mathematical model of such a cluster based raster imaging system, derive a robustness metric for evaluating heuristics in this environment, and demonstrate using the metric to make resource allocation decisions. The heuristics are evaluated within a simulation of the studied raster imaging system. We clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of the heuristics by comparing their results with the results of a resource allocation heuristic commonly used in this type of system.     

Designing a fuzzy system for controlling the armament fire in dynamic siege

This paper presents a fuzzy system for controlling the fire command in a surface-to-surface engagement by assuming siege of friendly side by enemy forces. The system must be capable of interacting with a dynamic and uncertain battle world in a real-time manner. In siege situation, it is assumed that the enemy troops are advancing toward friendly side in different directions and the defence resources are limited and nonrenewable at a single platform. Thus, resource allocation problem in a real-time manner is an important and vital component of battle management until coming of auxiliary forces. This paper addresses the design of a fuzzy system as an efficient tool for real-time decision-making in order to optimize the defense resource allocation in engagement.     

P2P流媒体中的数据分配算法

最近兴起的P2P技术在充分利用客户资源、提高系统的可伸缩性方面具有巨大的潜力,基于P2P提供视频服务已成为Internet的一项重要应用.在多对单P2P模式下,对多个发送端最优地分配发送速率和数据是一个难题.为此,提出了一种新的分配算法.首先,应用排队论把最优速率分配问题模型化为非线性最优化问题,推导出求解最优化问题的速率分配公式;然后,基于该公式提出最优速率分配算法(ORAA),并对ORAA输出解的最优性给出证明;最后,提出动态速率分配算法(DRAA).DRAA对动态的网络环境具有自适应性,能根据网络条件的变化最优地为多个发送端进行速率和数据分配.仿真实验结果表明,在不同的参数条件下,DRAA算法减少了计算和通信开销,比同类算法有更好的性能.     

工作流资源分配中约束规则的建模研究

传统工作流系统在对任务节点进行资源分配时,只进行了组织、角色、人员的分配,而较少对不同任务节点上执行人间的潜在关系进行建模.根据企业的实际应用需求,将这种潜在的约束关系提取出来进行建模,并以规则的形式进行定义.最后采用强有力的推理工具--规则引擎--来完成对定义的规则冲突检测以及规则的实现.